josiethefiend’s BodyBlog

Well, day two and I’ve already used my cheat meal.  But, it was a small celebration, and that’s what the cheat meal is there for.  The boyfriend got promoted at work.  It’s a safety net, and it has functioned effectively.  Though, I managed to really under-eat during the day, so my dinner indiscretion at Red Robin really hasn’t done that much damage.  I’ve come in right around 1400 calories (despite my best efforts at accurracy, I’m sure I’m underestimating here and there.  

Here’s what I ate and did today.  Mondays are always light days.  It’s like my week needs a warm up…

http://www.fitday.com/WebFit/PublicJournals.html?Owner=missjoe

So, having been previously inspired by friends making commitments to various things for various periods of time, I’ve decided to make a four-week committment to eating clean.  By this, I mean no processed junk, no empty foods, essentially making the best dietary decisions I can for my health, weight loss, and lifting.  This will mean a lot of oatmeal, a lot of protein powder, a lot of fish, and a lot of plain fruits and veggies.  There will be no deep fried foods, no more nachos, no unnecessary snacking, etc.  No booze.  The only exception, is one cheat-meal a week.  

Today, so far so good.  I’ve eaten:

- whole oatmeal w/ a scoop of protein, cinnamin, and a couple raisins
- scoop of protein w/ water
- tilapia and brocoli in curry simmer sauce
- fresh strawberries
- one organic fig newton
- one tortilla chip
- grilled tilapia
- Emergen-C

Most excellent, except for the fig newton and the chip.  Oops.  Tomorrow I’ll start calorie counting too.  I won’t be very restrictive, just conscious of where my calories are coming from.  

It’s still early, so I’ll likely have a little more protein or something before bed.  This has already been tough.  There are open bags of tortilla chips and Pirate Booty on the kitchen table, pie and lemonaide in the fridge, and I want all of it.  It’s taking a lot of restraint.

Ah, nothing like a 90+ degree day in Seattle to make you amazingly glad that you are less fat-bound than you were last summer.  I’m amazingly more comfortable now than I was last summer.  I was hoping the weight loss would work that way.

So, I’m continuing to yo-yo between 140-142 pounds, which is fine.  I’m really not stressing that at the moment.  If I never loose another pound, I’m still doing better than I ever have in my adult life, so, all is well.  Really, when it comes down to it, maintaining weight loss is the truly hard part.  So, I’m taking the time to remember to really enjoy what I’ve already accomplished, and to focus on making sure I maintain this thinner, healthier lifestyle, in the long term

As per usual, I’ve been tweaking my workouts.  I’ve finally gotten friendly with the Concept II at my gym, so I have even more variety in my cardio, which just rocks.  It’s an excellent machine, and I highly recommend it.  The good people that make them even sent me a free guide and rowing log.  Pretty neat, I think.

As for lifting, I’ve really switched things up.  I’ve downshifted from a five day split, to a three day split, and have cut out nearly all isolation exercises.  Here’s the dilly-o:

Monday:

 
-          Bench Press
-          Pull-ups (still just making attempts, not quite to a full one yet)
-          Pec Flys
-          Lat Pull

Thursday:

-          Stiff-legged Dead Lift
-          Full Squats
-          Lunges
-          Hamstring Curls

Saturday:

-          Military Press
-          Weighted Bench Dips
-          Rear Delts

It may be shocking, but I’ve all but cut out ab work.  I’m pushing really, REALLY hard on my compound lifts, focusing my all on lifting heavy and with great form.  I’m finding that this often involves my core a great deal, and ab work has become kinda superfluous.  I’m doing hanging leg raises and incline crunches whenever I feel the need, but that’s pretty rare.  Today I did ab work for the first time in almost two weeks.  Lo and behold, my abs are actually stronger than they were before. 

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

So yeah, making good strength gains right now, and my biceps have each grown a half inch, so I’m up to 12”.  I think that’s pretty rad.  Here’s some more numbers that I’m proud of:

Bench: 95 lbs. x 5 reps (up from 65 lbs. x 10 reps in March)
Millitary Press: 50 x 6 (up from 25 x 10)
Squats: 105 x 6 (up from 70 x 10)
SL Deadlift: 130 x 6 (up from 65 x 10)

I’m not too far away from benching/squatting/deadlifting my body weight.  Which I think is pretty f’in rad.  I did a little happy dance this week when I benched 95 for the first time.  Heh.  Some new things I’d like to pursue later on?  Mastering the Olympic lifts, and getting back into some form of consistent martial arts training.  But first, I’m getting ready to commit to a full month of eating clean.  I’ll probobly lean pretty heavily on my blog to hold myself accountable.  I think I’ll start this Saturday, allowing me to celebrate my boy’s birthday before buckling down.

The deal with my current routine, is that I’ve designed it to be fun.  I love lifting, so it’s set up so that I can lift five nights a week, with a variety of lifts that I enjoy (and a few that I don’t, but know are good for me). 

I’m thinking it’s about time to switch things up, and that I should consider a more practical routine.  I read today in Shape magazine that Leanne Rimes can bench press her body weight.  I, currently, am 55 lbs. short of doing that, but some little blonde country singer is there.  That’s embarassing, a little agrivating, and certainly a bit of inspiration. 

So, I’m thinking next week may be the begining of a Ripptoe kind of lifting program for me, and down-shifting to three nights a week instead of five.  I will dearly miss all my fun isolation lifts, but, I suppose they are superfluous.  I will, however, keep pullups.  I’m so damn close to doing real ones, there’s no way I’m ditching those now. 

So, I’m off to do some more research.  If you have any recomendations, do let me know!

Ah, it is so nice to watch the number on the scale moving down again.  So what if I get as excited now about .2 of a pound as I used to be about two  pounds.  Progress is progress, and I seem to be making a lot of it since I got back to calorie counting. 

Score.

I decided to try out Nectar protein, and I’m so in love.  It tastes better, has less calories, and I can mix it in plain water?  Sold.  I may even go back and buy another tub so I can have a variety of flavors.  I’m really that impressed.  I’ve also started taking CLA, but it would help if I could remember the damn stuff more than once a day.  Woops.  Finally, I’ve started cooking whole oats for breakfast every morning, and adding a scoop of the ON Cookies and Cream protein that I’m trying to hurry up and get rid of.  It’s pretty gross for drinking with milk, but seems to work alright in my oats.

As always, lifting continues to go well.  Miraculously, my boyfriend has suddenly decided to join me for my evening lifting sessions at the gym.  I’m more than a little surprised, and extremely excited to hopefully get him lifting consistantly.  I’ve also sneakily moved my ab work from the mornings to the evenings, so he will have to do it as well.  Call me selfish, but I’ve got dreams of a healthy, fit, six-pack man dancing through my head.  Heh. 

Now if I can just get him to lay off the buffets for lunch, I’ll have it made.

As for me, my stomach is shrinking finally, and starting to flatten out.  I’m using a notch on my belt that has never even seen a buckle before, and all of my pants are too big.  I’m totally daydreaming of posing suits by next year. 

Heh.  Rad song.

Anywho, all is well.  The day after getting hit by that truck, I wasn’t even sore.  My joints were a little stiff in the leg that got hit, that was all. By the next day, it was like nothing even happened.  I atribute this to my body being used to receiving far worse abuse from my own workouts five days a week.  Booya.

This Monday I started tracking my calories and such on FitDay again, and it’s worked wonders.  It’s so much easier to loose weight when I am holding myself accountable for everything I eat.  I’m down just over a full pound this week.  HUZZAH!  Naturally, I continue to lift hard and lift well. 

I’m really driven right now.  My relationship is on the rocks at the moment.  Nothing like busting your ass at the gym or obsessively monitoring your nutrition for a little healthy escapism.

This week I am making a concentrated effort to step up the duration and intensity of my cardio workouts.  So far, so good.  Though I think I could do better.  Tomorrow I will push harder.  I want my legs to feel like jelly when I’m done, and I want to be charging up hills on my bike before long. 

 
 Weight lifting continues to go well.  I bench pressed 85 lbs for a full 8 reps for the first time this week, which was pretty exciting.  Today I will once again attempt a real pull-up, and likely only lift myself a few inches.  That’s okay though.  I feel pretty awesome about even getting that far, instead of just hanging there and grunting as in the past.  I’m also now doing bicep curls with a 50 lbs bar, which is neat.  That’s more than some of the boys there do, so I’m feeling pretty cocky about that one.  It takes one hell of a metal face to crank that one out.
 I decided to not weigh myself for a couple of weeks.  Really, weight is a very silly number to fixate on, as you can go down in weight, but up in body fat percentage, so very easily.  Plus there’s water weight, and the fact that muscle is more dense then fat, and it’s just ridiculous.  Plus, it’s just such a bummer sometimes to see those fluctuations.  So, I’ll try to get away from it for a while.  I think it will be helpful to just enjoy what I see in the mirror and how I fit into my clothes for a while, and not be so obsessed with the scale.  But damn is it hard to not jump on the scale like I normally would at the gym everyday.  It’s a bit of an addiction, really. 

Lifting continues to go exceptionally well for me this week.  My lifts just keep going up up up.  I’m thrilled.  I think it has a lot to do with me eating better.  Perhaps there was something in the fish and fresh fruit that I’ve started eating more of that was missing before?  Not sure, but I will be trying to stick with it. 

There were bumps in the road this week, and I definitely didn’t eat clean for more that three meals in a row.  But, I didn’t do horrible either.  Regardless, every time I ate something less then ideal, my body told me that I was messing up.  Strange how I never realized how crappy certaine foods made me feel before, or how good others made me feel. 

I rather feel like gorging myself on food today, so tonight I think I may pick up a bunch of fruits, some yogurt, and maybe even a little dark chocolate, and have myself a finger food buffett tonight for desert, and just a good old fashioned protein shake for dinner. 

I’m really discovering the keys to better eating, though.  Namely being prepared ahead of time, never letting yourself get too hungry, and remembering all the great reasons to not eat junk.  I keep managing to convince myself that a few nachos here, and a handful of pretzels there, won’t really do much damage and won’t make me feel icky.  But they always do.

And finally, I believe I need to step up my cardio.  I’ve been affraid of sabotaging my weightlifting with too much, but I think I’m being too timid and using this rationale as an excuse to avoid putting a lot of effort into my cardio.  Time to take it up a notch.

Yesterday I did stiff-leg deadlifts at 120 lbs for ten reps.  I’m nearly bursting with pride.

I went up on all my Thursday lifts yesterday, and had overall the best workout in a long time.  45 lb shoulder presses, 90 lb lat pulls, ugh, it was awesome.  I feel so amazing today, with these tired but happy muscles reminding me all day of what I accomplished.  Then today is Bi’s and Tri’s, which is purely fun for me.  I get a kick out of doing burly bicep curls, pretending I’m out at muscle beach instead of in the stinky free-weight room.

Speaking of which, I’m currently gym shopping.  Not only do I feel like I’m kinda outgrowing my current gym (it doesn’t even have crash pads for doing cleans, lame), and it’s not a great one at all.  The oversold me on my membership, it’s not well cleaned or cleaned often enough, something is always broken (and it’s more often then not the air conditioning), and there’s duct tape and torn padding all over the place.  Yeah, it’s the most convenient location, but I think it’s time to move on.  My membership expires on the third, so I have a little time.

I’m kind of hoping to find a place with one of those neat sybex things I saw in "Getting Cut With Glass" last night.  So cool!  And those are great vids on Bodybuilding.com, btw.  I learned a lot, and now there’s some new lifts I want to try.  That reverse hack squat looks really neat, as did the shoulder presses from a full stop on the smith machine.

And just in case you were wondering, today is offically day four of successfully eating clean.  I have faith that I will be able to find a healthy dinner tonight.  I may have to get out my camera and do my best ChickenTuna impression to celebrate.

One final note, I’m considering incorporating creatine into my diet next week.  Now that I’ve gotten more serious about my diet, I’m willing to get more serious about my supplements.  About 3g a day seems to be the right dosage according to my research, maybe with 5g a day for the first three days, for a mini-loading.  That’s a happy medium between loading and not-loading, I think, since no one seems to agree about whether it’s necessary or not.

Well, so I still can’t do a real pull-up.  Oh well.  But, I did lift myself a few inches before my arms could do no more.  I made three attempts, and I think the second was my best, so I’ll warm up more next time.  If I had to guess, I’d say I lifted my body about four, maybe five inches.  So I’m probably about a third of the way there.  Could be better, could be worse, I’m just excited that my body didn’t feel overwhelmingly heavy to me, and that I was able to move at all.  I’ve never done that before, I’ve always just hung there straining.  This is a good sign of progress.  I can still only do full pull-ups with 50 lbs of assistance.  I suppose I might have been able to do a full one with 40 lbs if I hadn’t already fatigued my arms trying to do a real one, but it’s hard to say.
Yesterday was another success in terms of nutrition.  ZERO junk was ingested, even though I got some sad news and went to the bar with my boyfriend.  I had a protein smoothie with real fruit instead of booze.  So today, I rewarded myself a bit with a very healthy sandwich.  Whole grain organic bread, fresh organic lettuce and tomato, mayo, mustard, and two generous slices of fieldroast (a vegetarian thing, google if you must).  It was extremely satisfying, and my processed-carb cravings have been well-sated by the bread.  Go me! 
All my effort this week has left me feeling very empowered.  When I first read articles about figure, finess, and bodybuilding competitors, I was flabbergasted and could not believe that any mere mortal could have that much discipline.  I certainly never believed that I could have that much devotion to my workouts, let alone that much self-restraint with my diet.  And here I am, having probably the healthiest week of my life.  I didn’t realize I could do this.  I suppose for me it just comes down to getting right back on the horse, and eventually turning these “super human” feats into normal, everyday habits that just come naturally. 
A year ago, I was big, and lazy, and felt horrible about myself.  What a huge difference!  I think I’ve finally accepted that through consistency, patience, and perseverance, I will attain these goals I’ve set for myself.  So what if it took me over a year to loose 24 pounds.  So what if it takes me another year to lose the last 8.  I don’t care so much anymore, I’m just glad to be here and better than I was before.